Speaker: John Roughan is Scared
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Auckland should totally invest in Sky Cabs. So cheap, so cool looking, so easy to link all the suburbs to the train network. They could probably start with a better web site though.
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My understanding was that Sky Cabs monorail proposal was condidered some years back the opportunity has largly been lost as road verges for their track pylons are no longer available with the widening of roads.
In which case it's back to the beginning of the post...
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We should get a monorail like the one on Sydney. It's futuristic, reliable and has revolutionised public transport. Not to mention the whole voyeur/exhibitionist thing with third floor apartments
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Matt P:
Only takes a "good" multiple-fatality crash involving a truck that didn't need to be on the road before the penny-pinching attitude of Joyce on matters rail becomes very, very short-sighted. Especially since road safety is also his bailiwick. I wonder if there'd be grounds to sue for failure to adequately discharge his statutory duty to road safety, along the lines of the lawsuit just brought against NIWA.
SteveH:
Politicians make decisions on health that are much more directly responsible for deaths. If a lawsuit was going to work surely that'd be the place to start?
Some publicity would be a good start. And get Allan Dick to promote it.
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We should get a monorail like the one on Sydney. It's futuristic, reliable and has revolutionised public transport.
The Sydney monorail is a joke. Last I checked it was $4.90 for a single ride, way more expensive than trains and buses. While there has been an attempt to integrate monorail ticketing with the far more successful light rail (don't say trams, that's so Melbourne) few locals use it. It's also notoriously trouble-prone, requiring an 18-person cherry picker to be on standby for those not so rare occasions when it goes dead between staions.
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Also, this article is more relevant than ever. De-unionisation and market oversupply make for a volatile cocktail. And what does Prostetnic Vogon Joyce do? He allows bigger and heavier trucks that the roads can't handle.
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I don't think Skycabs should be confused with monorails. The cool thing about Skycabs is that you can have a cab hanging off each side going in different directions (or the same direction). From memory the support column foot print is really small, so you don't need to shift loads of services (which is often very expensive) and the control system could be really smart. Oh and I think if one breaks down you can just use the next one to shove it along to the next station. I find it hard to believe you couldn’t find suitable places for them. Basically I think Skycabs rock. (they just don’t exist)
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Trucks on the road! Driving back on Highway One from a taping of Media 7 last night, with a vanload of 9 students, it sure wasn't fun being wedged between double-banger trucks doing 110km in pouring rain.
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I still can't see how allowing larger trucks can save cost for several reasons;
Maintenance periods will mean a larger cut in productivity due to lost capacity.
Breakdowns, punctures and accidents would impact on a higher percentage of goods.
Longer loading and unloading times.
Increased wear and tear on roads.
Greater restriction of movement.
Greater impact damage to property in collisions.
More road closures after accidents due to difficulty in removing larger debris field.
Slower ascent of inclines causing hold ups.
Less diversity in provider choice leading to monopoly/cartel formation.
Supporters of the plan say it will lead to better productivity and fuel efficiency but the productivity claims seem negligible, in light of the above and fuel efficiency would come nowhere near that of train freight.
So, why are they even considering such nonsense?. Should we follow the money?. -
For those who have access to a hardcopy of today's Herald, there is a letter from Joyce on the letters page, in which he responds to criticism of his 'big truck' policy.
Letters page does not appear to be available online.
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Josh,
Let's say we build a North Shore Line. Then we can continue some of those trains through to the North Shore, but that doesn't help us get that many more trains to Britomart from the south, west and eastern lines. In fact, 20 trains in is about one every three minutes and it's not possible to run trains at frequencies too much higher than that. Would we want all 20 going to the North Shore? I doubt it, which means we'll still have to turn around a large number of trains.
But once any train has got to Britomart its effectiveness for any peak period is effectively over and there is no point in turning it around.
In Auckland we have a rush of just over 2 hours each morning and afternoon. We need to maximise transportation at these times, during the rest of the day the trains run less than 1/4 full. So during peak hours we need to maximise capacity to the City. The rest of the time is adequately covered by current services.
You suggest this peak capacity is best achieved by sending trains looping back to Swanson or Papakura, but each of those is a round trip of 2 hours. The rolling stock can only make 1 trip in the right direction and 1 in the wrong direction each. And you'd end up with all the peak hour trains sitting at points south of the city (Otahuhu) when the afternoon rush starts.
I suggest the exact same increase in capacity could be had by sending trains through to the Shore. And because the trains will end up parked north of the city they are then well positioned when it comes to moving the bulk of people south or west in the evening.
What the CBD rail tunnel does so well is provide two ways in which trains from the west, south, east and Onehunga (read: Airport in the future) can access Britomart and the CBD. They can either access via the existing tracks from the east, or they can access from the new portal around Mt Eden. My preferred service pattern would link the west and south lines together, and link the east and airport lines together. How that would work is shown in this post.
The other thing a CBD rail tunnel does so well is make the CBD a much nicer place to work. It will allow intensification of land usage as much of the transit load will be removed from city streets, which have become a lot more crowded recently with the building of high rise apartment blocks where each of the residents have there own car (they need their own car because this is Auckland where large swathes of the city are almost bereft of PT). A rail tunnel under the CBD will mean more jobs in the CBD which would be a very good thing in a city with an effective centralised PT system, but this is Auckland which does not have an effective PT system.
This is Auckland where 225,000 people living in an extremely close physical location to the CBD are forced to use an 8 lane motorway to get there. So what do you think will happen when we intensify jobs in the city? Will it equate to more or less usage of the bridge? How is it justifiable to highly intensify CBD employment when a full half (or more) of Auckland can only gain access by motorways?
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For those who have access to a hardcopy of today's Herald, there is a letter from Joyce on the letters page, in which he responds to criticism of his 'big truck' policy.
Sounds just like a Tony Friedlander write-up with a ministerial letterhead.
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Just a thought: has anyone ever seriously looked at/studied, or suggested things like staggered working hours, or working from home?
There must be a fair percentage whack of workers in the CBD who don't actually need to all be sitting at their desks in the same rabbit hutch as their co-workers, arriving and leaving at the same time.
Tax breaks for companies who institute flexitime and/or offsite working might go some way towards easing peak-hour congestion.
Or is that the sort of crazy thinking that earns a trip to the reeducation farm?
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Mr Friedlander was replaced by Ken Shirley surely?
Wellington, May 28 NZPA - Former ACT Party deputy leader Ken Shirley will become chief executive of the Road Transport Forum when former National Party cabinet minister Tony Friedlander retires from the lobby group in July.
Another one of those Labour turncoats that went to ACT along with Douglas and Prebble.
So, following the money is easy, Accountants Crooks and Turncoats says it all. -
Joyce has shown consistently that he won't pay to rehabilitate rail, preferring to diminish the size and utility of the network so that Quinn is forced to play with one hand tied behind his back as he tries to grow KR's income and share of the freight market.
Keep an eye on Quinn. If he does manage to grow KR with this constraint he'll be very valuable management material.
Incidentally, does anyone know the reason why port bound trucks, rather than using the expensive motorway built for them, tend to drive up symonds St.
Or up/down Parnell Rise as I saw the other day a fully laden truck trailer unit go up through Parnell.
I prefer the more romantic notion that the poor dears are lost, and are trying to find their way home.
Wearing my private citizen hat:
On the heavy truck / flimsy bridge problem, word is that Auckland City Council has been proactive and has strengthened bridges around the city - probably those in the Penrose area. One the one hand it's nice to be proactive but I pine for a bit of old fashioned 'we'll get around to it soon' timing; a heavy truck and a collapsed bridge sends a pretty clear message.And if it is true that Council has strengthened bridges, then darling ratepayers have forked out for Friedlander. Big time. Nice work if you can get it - but this line of work is restricted to straight white middle aged middle class men of a certain worldview.
There must be a fair percentage whack of workers in the CBD who don't actually need to all be sitting at their desks in the same rabbit hutch as their co-workers, arriving and leaving at the same time.
It's all about the coffee breaks. Life isn't much fun having coffee at home and gossiping to the walls about what happened on Nurse Jackie last night. That behaviour earns a trip to the reeducation farm.
There have been a number of studies which endorse your point of view. But I want to have coffee with my team and gossip - excuse me....
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Just a thought: has anyone ever seriously looked at/studied, or suggested things like staggered working hours, or working from home?
Working closer to home is good too, especially if you live on the Shore, come to think of it, is there any other reason to live on the Shore?.
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It's all about the coffee breaks. Life isn't much fun having coffee at home and gossiping to the walls about what happened on Nurse Jackie last night. That behaviour earns a trip to the reeducation farm.
The internet was invented so home workers like me can gossip. Problem solved.
Seriously though, working from home is not for everyone. It's scarily isolating at times. I wouldn't mind having an office with other human beings in it to go to sometimes. Then I could come home and get some work done after all the socializing and suit-wearing and commuting was done with.
Working closer to home is good too, especially if you live on the Shore, come to think of it, is there any other reason to live on the Shore?.
Living on the isthmus and working on the Shore is quite nice though - you get half the bridge practically to yourself.
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Working closer to home is good too, especially if you live on the Shore, come to think of it, is there any other reason to live on the Shore?.
Working closer to home isn't always possible, especially in households with two or more workers. My office is an Albany and my wife works out by the airport. We can't both work close to home. Well actually we can because I'm able to work from home, but that's not an option for many people.
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So why don't you move out to the Airport? That would make your Wife's commute so much easier.
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Josh,
Head slap moment, I have been a bit thick. Of course having two ends pointed south will double the capacity of trains from the south, because they can come in both ends. Unless there was demand for 20 trains from the Shore that extension would not increase capacity by an equivalent amount.
Second half of above comment still applies though - how can you reduce car travel by increasing the intensity of an urban centre whose predominant modes of access are motorways?
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Second half of above comment still applies though - how can you reduce car travel by increasing the intensity of an urban centre whose predominant modes of access are motorways?
By making the alternatives to cars more viable. I'm not really following your point at all. Yes, more alternatives will make the city more attractive. That will be because it is, in fact, more attractive. This is not a bad thing because it will encourage more cars (although it will probably do that). If the alternatives are what is making it more attractive, that means the people it is attracting are using the alternatives.
I guess I just can't understand the idea that it's a bad thing to make the city a better place because then people might want to go there. Something's broken in that idea. It's just as broken as the corollary that you should make the city a shitty place for cars with tolls to encourage people onto public transport. That just makes the city a shittier place. Both ideas are not about growing the city, they're about constraining it.
which have become a lot more crowded recently with the building of high rise apartment blocks where each of the residents have there own car (they need their own car because this is Auckland where large swathes of the city are almost bereft of PT).
Cars in apartments are not such a problem. They have, after all, got their own parking, and they're not using the cars during commuting times because they can walk to work (or if they don't work in the city, they're driving the other way to all the traffic). Apartment dwellers generally own cars so they can use them to get around the rest of the city, not the CBD, and to do heavy shopping.
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Seriously though, working from home is not for everyone. It's scarily isolating at times. I wouldn't mind having an office with other human beings in it to go to sometimes. Then I could come home and get some work done after all the socializing and suit-wearing and commuting was done with.
There was a big explosion of interest out of the States a few years ago in shared offices where there are work stations with all the mod cons, and you booked them to use as necessary. This was conceived as a way to combat what you describe. I don't know where that interest went and I haven't heard of anything similar set up here.
I live about 10 mins walk to my office and it's at Uni near to alot of bus routes so I rarely use my car during the week, and only use it on weekends but then why would you - the traffic is CRAZY on weekends. So I walk or ride my bike on the weekends...
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how can you reduce car travel by increasing the intensity of an urban centre whose predominant modes of access are motorways?
What Ben said...
Or, to greatly simplify the argument, if X number of people currently travel to work in the city and I build a PT system so that X+Y people can travel to work in the city with the same effort, it makes sense that the city and the area along the new PT corridor will intensify to take advantage of this. The car traffic may stay at the same level, but the city grows by Y people and those people use the PT to commute.
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So why don't you move out to the Airport? That would make your Wife's commute so much easier.
We did. But the point is that if I couldn't work from home then there would be no place that didn't result in a long commute for one of us - and that's probably the case for many couples these days. I'm just saying that living near your workplace is becoming increasingly impractical for couples. As more couples both work and the larger the city becomes the more people will be in that situation.
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